Pages

Saturday, February 27, 2016

A Revolutionary Approach to the Sanders Campaign by Ray Light

A Revolutionary Approach to the SandersPresidential Campaignby RAY LIGHT

“Engels
is most definite in calling universal suffrage an instrument of
bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, … is the ‘gauge of the
maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more
in the present-day state.’” (Cited by Lenin in The State and
Revolution)

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Race thus far reflects the
bitter experience of the working class, the urban and rural poor, and
the middle class with the capitalist austerity for the 99% and the
almost unprecedented boom years for Wall Street and finance capital.
This assault on our conditions of life has been provided by the
bipartisan “Republicrats” under Republican President George W. Bush and
Democratic President Barack Obama since the economic crisis hit in 2007
and 2008.

Under the banner of “universal suffrage,” the TV
debates, polls, rallies, and constant media coverage have revealed that
there is remarkably little support for the “Republicrat” “2016 heavy
favorites” (mainstream Democratic and Republican candidates, Hillary
Clinton and especially Jeb Bush). Instead, the strong showing of right
wing, fascistic Tea Party candidates such as Trump, Carson, Fiorina,
Cruz, Rubio et al. on the Republican side and the social-democrat
Sanders on the Democratic side reflects some level of popular mass
rejection of “Republicrat Rule” and the Wall Street imperialist ruling
class they represent.

Many of the ruined privileged petty
bourgeoisie especially the white supremacist, great nation chauvinist,
and Christian fundamentalist among them) are backing Trump, Carson,
Fiorina, Cruz or Rubio and have helped these candidates attract large
numbers of (especially white) impoverished workers and the poor. This
campaign is accelerating the already formidable fascist direction in
which the USA has been going for some time now — especially during the
George W. Bush and Barack Obama years. It is a disturbing and dangerous
development.

On the other hand, large numbers of lower middle
class and working class folks who have also experienced increasing
economic hardship are supporting Bernie Sanders. This has been shown by
the huge numbers of people that have attended a Sanders Rally and/or
donated to his campaign, dwarfing the numbers for other presidential
candidates. The Sanders campaign is mobilizing this mass support in
spite of the pro-imperialist, pro-Wall Street national AFL-CIO and NAACP
misleadership with their early endorsement of arch imperialist and Wall
Street puppet Hillary Clinton. As 2016 begins, only three national
unions have endorsed Sanders — National Nurses United, American Postal
Workers Union (APWU) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Yet these three unions, with their Sanders endorsement and progressive
leadership, do not represent any significant break with the treacherous
AFL-CIO leadership, such as had occurred in the 1930’s in the split
between the stagnant, top-down AFL bureaucracy and the then new and
rising, emerging democratic mass-oriented CIO, with its large Communist
Party influence. Moreover, Sanders’ commitment ahead of time to support
Clinton or Biden or whatever imperialist war criminal the Democratic
Party ultimately picks as its candidate sharply diminishes the extent to
which the Sanders Campaign represents any real alternative to the
“Republicrats” and to the Tea Party.

After six decades of
U.S. imperialist hegemony in the world capitalist camp, a period that
witnessed the dismantling of the international communist movement and
the demise of the socialist camp, the U.S. sector of the international
working class remains largely isolated from the rest of the class. It is
still politically overwhelmed by its immediate and direct bourgeois
enemy, U.S. imperialism. This still powerful global force, the U.S.
Empire, as the main bastion of international capitalism, continues to
draw its strength from its international connections, from the
oppression of the world’s peoples.

This unequal conflict between
U.S. labor and U.S. capital is reflected, among other things, in the
lack of a revolutionary working class vanguard party in the USA today.
Furthermore, there seems to be no short term prospect for the
re-establishment of proletarian international solidarity among the rest
of the international working class and especially with the U.S. workers
such as existed in the days of the Soviet-led Communist International.

Nevertheless,
the U.S. Empire is itself in rapid decline, a factor that provides
renewed opportunities for the advance of the proletarian revolutionary
cause in the USA.

In the Presidential Campaign thus far, the
Sanders For President Campaign is helping to educate the working class
and oppressed nationalities and the poor that they are entitled to a
better life, after decades in which most of the workers and the 99% have
bought Wall Street’s idea that the problems in the USA are due to the
workers receiving more than they deserve! (The Democratic Party and its
AFL-CIO Labor Lieutenants, NAACP misleaders, etc. claim that “the middle
class” needs and deserves more but not the increasing masses of poor
people and the working class.)

At the same time, the Sanders
Campaign makes concrete positive mass demands on the U.S. imperialist
ruling class. Single payer universal health care, $15/hr minimum wage,
defense of the public good, i.e. free public college tuition, public
schools and public post office, etc. Most or all of this Campaign’s
demands had already been identified by the Revolutionary Organization of
Labor (ROL-USA) as worthwhile goals of the class struggle around which
we are trying to mobilize the working class and the masses. Both within
and in conjunction with the Sanders Campaign we can now continue and
deepen the political struggle around these demands.

Trump and the
other Republican tea party candidates are moving U.S. society rapidly
and decisively toward fascism (Trump’s anti-Latino immigrant bashing,
Fiorina’s spearhead of an anti-women campaign, the Carson-led
anti-Muslim immigrant hysteria). On a positive note, however, the
Sanders Campaign is moving a segment of the U.S. populace toward
opposition to Wall Street rule.

Can the weak and isolated
revolutionary working class forces in the USA today afford to stand
outside the fray and refuse to critically support the Sanders campaign’s
half-hearted and fatally compromised defense of the petty bourgeoisie,
the workers and the poor? Half-hearted and fatally compromised because
Sanders himself remains wedded and committed to the Democratic Party
wing of the “Republicrat”party of Wall Street and U.S. imperialism and
to defense of the U.S. Empire.

Remember the guidance of our
boldest leader, comrade Lenin, — we need to make political compromises
and alliances. But these maneuvers can only advance the proletarian
revolutionary cause if we implement a principled policy using both
“unity with and struggle against” our temporary allies. For example,
Lenin observed: “The Bolsheviks … since 1905 have systematically
insisted on an alliance between the working class and the peasantry
against the liberal bourgeoisie and tsardom, never, however, refusing to
support the bourgeoisie against tsardom (for instance during second
ballots) and never ceasing their relentless ideological and political
struggle against the bourgeois-revolutionary peasant party, the
‘Socialist-Revolutionaries,’ exposing them as petty-bourgeois democrats
who falsely masqueraded as Socialists.”

Following the Bolshevik
example, we can endorse the Sanders petty bourgeois democratic domestic
platform, while ceaselessly opposing and exposing his criminal support
for the U.S. Empire with its continuous imperialist war and oppression
of the peoples of the world. In order to have successful
(pro-revolutionary) united front work with the Sanders Campaign,
however, it is crucial that we remain constantly mindful that Sanders is
no better than “the extreme left wing of the imperialist bourgeoisie”
and that we have a constant duty to educate the workers and oppressed
within the USA and around the world of that fact.

In a section of
Ray O’Light Newsletter #59 (March-April 2010) entitled, “Obama and the
Federal Government Preside Over the U.S. Empire in Decline” we opened
with the following sentence: “Barack Obama is well suited for the
difficult task of presiding over an orderly march of the U.S. population
to impoverishment in the desperate effort of the U.S. monopoly
capitalist and imperialist ruling class to save itself and its hegemonic
position in the world capitalist system.”

After elaborating
how, in the face of the Obama bailout of Wall Street, the Obama-Biden
Democratic Administration had seduced much of the U.S. “left,” the
Afro-American people, Latino immigrant workers, and the organized
section of the U.S. working class under AFL-CIO leadership, we concluded
that: “This march to impoverishment, however, is still only in its
beginning stages. And the challenge to the U.S. monopoly capitalist and
imperialist ruling class and President Obama to lead the masses of
working people and oppressed nationalities in the USA to poverty without
us opting for revolt, without us turning to socialist revolution for
the way out of our difficulties, will only get more difficult.”

Since
we made the above observation, the more than five years of bitter
experience of the 99% of the U.S. population on our backward march to
austerity, under the leadership of the Obama Regime and U.S.
imperialism, is the concrete material basis for the strength of the
Sanders Campaign that has surprised everyone – including Sanders. In
this light it is clear that a section among “the 99%,” among the U.S.
workers, the oppressed nationalities and petty bourgeoisie, are
beginning to turn “to socialist revolution as the way out of our
difficulties.” This helps explain why Sanders raises the need for a
“political revolution,” despite having already committed himself to
support the nominee of the Democratic wing of the imperialist ruling
party, the “Republicrats.”

The Sanders Campaign represents a
step, though a small one, by thousands of U.S. workers and of the 99%,
including some youth, toward open “revolt,” toward “socialist
revolution.” ROL-USA and the handful of other proletarian
revolutionaries in the USA have a responsibility to help the class and
the masses to continue on this revolutionary path to workers power and
socialism.

2 comments:

Ho hum. More big commie drivel. Despite what tis pres says, the folks in flyover country are not the backward, uneducated yokels that comprise the 'working class' in Russasia. Even people in the lowest economic groups in the USA have a standard of living far higher than the best worker's paradise in the world.

The violent revolution espoused by the various communists won't fly in this country. Even the dumbest bible totin' hick has three or four firearms. And they aren't so thick as they can't see the evidence of the horrors BigSoc has shown.Armed revolution won't work. What will work is the frog in the pan. It's getting warmer here everyday, and it nothing to do with climate change.

Very precise and concise political analysis of how well the majority is doing, does need to do and ought to get underweigh--ongoing! In other words when new-Modernist approaches alongside fascist-plutocracy, we may as well be anti-Bourgeoisie and have the balance of Medicare for all. That is, the latter of why the insurance to keep wars on-going is never paid!

Please limit your comments to the content of the posts---not your self-perceived, self-righteous, personal opinions of the authors/activists who post at this blog. Personal attacks, or threats of violence will not be posted....moderator.

An American in Syria John Mesler 8/30/2015 In 1955 Alcoa was the first big sponsor to drop the Edward R. Murrow Show. Alcoa didn't...

MISSION STATEMENT

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox is an independent online radio show and blog that strives to be completely free from establishment political ideology and focus on a message of peace, justice, environmental sustainability and economic equality. To this end, we provide educational and inspirational programs on topics related to these issues and we organize/promote actions working towards peace, justice, and environmental sustainability.